ImAlive

You should propably not use any electrolytic caps in AC situations, the can "take" only 1 polarity and may get damaged or even explode if voltage is applied in the wrong way. A ceramic cap in series (parallel wiring might give you plenty of DC and be pretty pointless - Lowpass) with the signal line should block DC good enough. If touching the ground changes stuff, something else might be touching the ground when it shouldn't, so check for shorts. When checking with an osc., be sure to have DC adjusted to zero before checking, and that all grounds are wired properly.

Wattage on Pots means max. loss power generated in the part itself. You get this by multiplying current through the pot with the voltage over the pot (this depends on the resistance of the bulb AND the pot) - good old P = U * I. So, if you drive 2 Amps through a Pot which eats away 1 V out of 12 (2W generated), and the pot is rated 0.6W, it would probably not stand the heat.

From what I've heard, this should be possible. You'll need 1xAIN, 1xDINx4, 1xDOUTx4 (not quite sure about that, depends on the way to drive the LEDs), and obviously 1 CORE. For instance, the MIDIBOX64-Application should handle this ("ghost controllers" will always stay at zero when grounded). There might be some work waiting, depending on what you want these controls to do ;) But maybe you should give us more details on your plans, so that your question can be answered in a better way, and maybe by someone who has more midibox-knowledge than me 8)

It might be better to employ fuses. Like 20 Amps output current can melt quite some stuff...

If your voltage on the PC-PSU is too high, you should put more dummy load to this line by means of connecting a power resistor, if you run the PSU while not installed in a PC (most PSUs won't run without load anyways). Another issue from PC PSUs is noisy voltage which might create AIN jitter, be sure to use bypass caps.

MIOS ist das Betriebssystem, die jeweilige Anwendung die dann auf MIOS läuft bestimmt, was der PIC letztendlich mit seinen Ein/Ausgängen tut. Beides wird über MIDI (per PC) aufgespielt, den Brenner brauchst du nur für den Bootloader, der ja schon drauf ist - also benötigst du den Brenner gar nicht :D (was besser ist, denn die Dinger funktionieren nie wirklich zuverlässig...). Zum Aufspielen empfiehlt sich http://miosstudio.midibox.org/. midibox64 ist hier: http://www.ucapps.de/mios/midibox64_v2_4.zip Und es ist immer ganz gut die Hilfeseiten von ucapps.de zu lesen, denn da steht das eigentlich alles drin ;D

Die Fader werden als Spannungsteiler benutzt, daher ist der exakte Widerstandswert nicht soo wichtig, empfohlen sind 10kOhm. Du musst erst noch MIOS und deine Anwendung auf den PIC spielen. Der Bootloader "erwartet" einen MIOS-Upload per MIDI (näheres dazu auf der entsprechenden Seite von ucapps.de). Wenn MIOS aufgespielt ist, kommt deine Anwendung, in deinem Fall vermutlich MIDIBOX64.

Oops, I was wrong wrong wrong!! (Damn memory...) The caps go between pin 16 and one out of 6,7 or 8! So that would be the topmost RIGHT and lowest LEFT pins, viewed from the top. Here's an image, as viewed from the solder side:

Just stumbled across this when completing my core. I use only one AIN module, so I thought that the other muxed AIN inputs on J5 of the core (A4...A7) should be clamped to ground, too. Maybe this helps... and if this is the case, then it should be mentioned on the core page in the J5 description, right? Right now I'm about to power up and check those cores... so excited :D - aaand, the cores rush to life, all voltages fine 8)

Yeah, most commonly it's just diagonally between the topmost left and the lowest right pin (top view). You can also buy sockets in which these bypass caps are already contained. And as illogik posted, there are pics on the module page. (If I may add this, soldering stuff on the bottom side of the board sucks ;D )

Normally, this is done by cutting into the copper trace with a sharp cutter blade until it is through at the location where you want to separate the trace. You should check that the traces are isolated with a multimeter to be sure afterwards, though...

This sure is easy, but you won't be able to do a CORE module layout with this ;D You just "draw" your traces directly onto the copper-plated PCB with a resistant marker-pen. Then you throw the PCB into your etching solution (like FeCl3), wait, take it out, clean it, remove the ink with alcohol, and ta-daa ;) I did my modules with the "Iron-on" method, as mentioned in the wiki.

So, a little overheating does not kill the PIC, which would mean that chances are good my 2nd one ist still alive. And yeah, I usually unplug the programmer and short the capacitor before inserting a chip. I tried out some combinations, but not really every one imaginable. I switched to a 220 Ohms resistor like you did, tried different caps (as a next step, I would have tried a "bad ass" cap). I just used 0.7 on Linux, 'cause under Win readcfg gave back all FF. I don't know, will the port mode change something? It was set to EPP/ECP in my previous tries, maybe I should try SPP? Perhaps some geek at my university owns a PIC burner, I'll try asking around, my motivation with self-burning is somewhat down... Regarding free samples, I think these are not intended for end users, and I'd feel bad about lying ;) besides of that, I have no idea of what hassles customs would produce.

Sorry for doubleposting... One of my PICs is dead. It died a violent, heatful dead and I'm not quite certain why this happened. It just went *snap* *smoke*. At that moment, I was checking voltages with portdiag with PIC stuffed in (the voltages were OK, but can you do this with PIC in place?). I had done this before without problems. My suspicion is that I might have reversed the polarity of the 9V supply, but I can't be sure. Now you can see 6€ of dead silicon with a burn stain lying around here. Before the PIC died, I tried different combinations of batteries, capacitors and resistors, but it never got recognized, even after 100 tries... Right now, I don't have much more motivation left to fumble around with this burner. My case is built, the faders and pots are about to be mounted, all modules are built, all I need now is a working PIC (and I'll have to go and buy a fresh one. Yeah, real cool. Although it is almost certainly my fault, a swabian guy hates to waste money :P) and all I would want is to go and tweak those knobs, but I'm stuck in a really annoying phase >:(

You really tried like 30 times without changing the setup between the tries? Well, that's something I could do 8) Do you have to run erasepic before you try readcfg? I didn't do that. Whew, everytime I plug that thing in, I'm afraid of frying the PIC or my PC :-\ Getting it out isn't that hard, just use a screwdriver as a lever and some caution. EDIT: Damn... my voltages are dropping like hell! I connected everything, and measured the parallel voltages of all pins with the PIC inserted. Well, my LPT supply drops to 0.8V with PIC in, and the batteries go down to 1.7V (not sure if they are all brand new). 9.5V stays stable. But when changing voltages with portdiag, high is just 0.8V when low is 0.3V! My PIC sucks voltages :-[ I even thought the PIC might get *slightly* warm, but this could as well be imagination. Hm. I checked the circuit for shorts with the multimeter, everything seems to be in order... maybe as a next step, I'll measure the current through the PIC... EDIT: I am such a d*mb idi*t ;D soldered Vdd to pin 10 and Vss to pin 11 *smashes head on table* and if that wasn't enough, the power pins on the right side are shifted up one pin, too. Man, what was I thinking... I hope the PIC survived this... luckily I don't trust myself and did only very short power-on phases... EDIT again: Fixed that wrong pin business. Now, powering the PIC from LPT pulls the voltage down to 3.37V, which isn't so good. Plugging my battpack on the pic results in a voltage of 4.7V - great! When I'm back later, I'll try readcfg... (managed portdiag to work under windows, but readcfg gives all ff, lets see what it'll say with PIC in place).